First Application of Natural Polymer to the Direct Filtration System: Moringa Oleifera

摘要

Recent years, it has been found that Moringa oleifera is the best organic naturalrnpolymer discovered yet, which is active and safe for human health. The focus of thisrnresearch has been the application of the natural polymer to the direct filtration system.rnThe experimental work has been conducted in both laboratory and pilot scalernemploying natural turbid water. During the laboratory tests, jar test has been appliedrnto compare between natural polymer and aluminum sulphate as a common coagulantrnin developing countries. The turbidity of the natural water samples were ranged fromrn7.60 to 23 NTU. Polymer dose of 1, 2 and 3 mg/l have been tested as well as alumrndose of 5, 15 and 20 mg/l. After mixing and settling the jars, the best polymer dosernwas found to be 3 mg/l producing turbidity of 1.60 NTU while the best alum dose wasrn20 mg/l producing turbidity of 1.08 NTU. Noteworthy, it has observed that the sludgernproduced from the natural polymer is one fifth the sludge produced from the alum. Arndirect filtration pilot plant has been constructed to treat 3.0 m3/d of natural surfacernwater as an average flow. The pilot plant consisted of rapid mixing tank, dosingrnsystem and 200 mm filtration column using coarse sand media. Results obtained fromrnseveral runs showed that the naturally derived polymer has resulted in increasing thernrate of filtration to 4.50 m/hr instead of 3.25 m/hr compared to the alum case. as wellrnas increasing the run length up to 150%. Moreover, the effluent turbidity ranged fromrn0.76 to 1.03 NTU while the influent turbidity ranged from 17.70 to 23 NTU and thernalgal removal efficiencies ranged from 90 to 96% without chlorination. Thusrnconstituting a high potential of using the Moringa Oleifera as a natural coagulantrnalternative to the alum and other metallic salts, especially in developing countries.